NOTABLE BRIDGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 183, 4 August 1936, Page 9

NOTABLE BRIDGE.

NEW YORK FEAT.

MANHATTAN, QUEENS, BRONX.

EAST RIVER STRUCTURE.

With the opening by President Roosevelt last month of the great Triborough Bridge, connecting Manhattan, the Queens and the Bronx, three of !New York City's five boroughs, the seal has been placed on an important engineering feat. The cost of the structure was about £13,000,000. The Y-sha.ped bridge spanning land and water has a main portion four and a half miles long, but with approaches and connecting roadways at the ends it is a 19-mile project. Work was begun on it in 1931 after 20 years of agitation, was halted during 1932, but was resumed after £9,000,000 in Federal funds were provided. It is the largest project under the Works Progress Association's scheme in the New York area. The fifth and northernmost vehicular bridge across the Last River, linking skvscraper Manhattan and Long Island, it is expected to be an important traffic | factor for the world's fair to be held in Queens Borough in 1939. The longest! bridge of the project—itself really three bridges over parts of the Last Rivei and Bronx Kills, with connecting elevated roadways it uses Wards and Randalls Islands in the East River as stepping stones. _ A fourth spur bridge connects with it at Randall's Island and extends westward to Manhattan. The main bridge, whose feature is a 1400 ft suspension span connecting Queens Borough . Ward's Island, has eight traffic lanes and is 98ft wide. The suspension towers are 275 ft high. The outstanding feature of ®be mammoth structure is the 2100-ton lift span, 310 ft long, the largest in the world, in the Manhattan spur. It rises 80ft to a point 135 ft above -water to permit the passagyof it.

The aerial picture on this page gnes some idea of the great engineering feat. The bridge to the right is the Hell Gate railroad structure. Starting from Astoria Long Island (right foreground), the Triborougli swings upward to cross East River —an important shipping artery —and then turns to the right to cross first Ward's Island, Little Hell Gate, Randall's Island, and then branches to connect the Bronx (upper right) and Manhattan (upper left). In the corner on the upper left the graceful George Washington bridge, noted for its memorial beacons to Wiley Post and Will Rogers.